"Now You Know"

The birth certificate provided by the Barack Obama campaign in 2008. PD.

Months after Barack H. Obama became president of the United States, Internet rumors continue to circulate that Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to hold his office.

But the evidence is incontrovertible, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Obama was born at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, well after Hawaii became a U.S. state.

Because rumors about Obama’s alleged out-of-U.S. birth were circulating, his campaign released a copy of his Hawaii birth certificate in 2008 (unlike some other jurisdictions, Hawaii does not make birth certificates public information without consent of the affected person and/or the person’s family), which may have been a first for a U.S. presidential campaign. The document clearly shows the information listed above about his birth, giving his full name as Barack Hussein Obama II, born to Barack Hussein Obama and a woman with the maiden name of Stanley Ann Dunham. His mother was listed as Caucasian, his father as African.

Furthermore, a Honolulu newspaper, the Advertiser, printed an announcement of the birth nine days later. Conspiracy theorists are hard-pressed how to explain how — even if the Obama campaign provided a fake birth certificate — the campaign could have had the foresight 46 years before the campaign began to have the newspaper announcement made.

And could the certificate be fake? To any reasonable mind, no. Aside from the fact that the certified copy held by the Obama campaign had all the signs of authenticity — embossed seal and all that — its authenticity has been confirmed by Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains the records.

Certainly, there are those conspiracy theorist who will continue to doubt. Unfortunately for them, however, evidence for their claims is laughably lacking.

April 2011 update: Saying that the dispute over his birth had become a political distraction even though it was “silliness,” Obama has released a copy of the “long form” of his birth certificate, the long form being the original document that serves as the source of information for the certificate released during the campaign. The “long form” states that the birth took place at Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital and that Obama’s father’s occupation was being a student (in a sign of the times, the certificate had no space for the mother’s occupation). It also includes signatures of Obama’s mother, the attending physician and the local registrar.

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